Café Dissensus

By Oishika Ghosh

Today, while fair skin drains into class associations, dark skin is conceived as connotations of filth. Likewise, ‘tan’ is getting reconsidered nowadays as a skin texture ‘in trend’, particularly for the beach-loving leisure class. But what we tend to overlook in a majority of skin-centric narratives is – women. Within the rubric of these arguments and counterarguments, the focus of this article is to examine how women’s assignment with tattoos on skin incorporates conformity to and confrontation against the established and layered meaning-making of femininity. While this study focuses on the literary analysis of women’s tattooed bodies, it also emphasizes the reasons and occasions owing to which these tattoos are drawn – be it for celebration, for mourning, for remembrance, for concealing scars or for maintaining mere lineages. The analysis in this piece is qualitative in nature.

Skin is the largest organ on which we project our greatest fantasies yet deepest qualms. Expose too much of it, and fundamentalists will disparage it. Ink it, and one becomes sexually alluring right away. The more one modifies it with surgeries, the more one falls into the trap of societal preconceived standards of beauty. Amid these narratives, which evolve and revolve around skin, it is the upper layer of skin or epidermis that holds the ink of the tattoo. Skin can be argued as an organ that is repetitively modified and remodified – by removing hairs with razors, using expensive creams, incorporating anti-aging products, or by inking it. However, the meaning-making of each of these skin modifications is not as layered and rich as inking the skin implies.

Prior research studies (Cronin, 2001; Juniper, 2008; Goldstein, 2007; Mifflin, 2013) reveal that women’s tattooed bodies suffer from pessimistic connotations in the eyes of society. Women, tattooing their bodies, are considered to have committed an outrageous act. However, on the flip side inking women’s bodies provides them a stern control over their bodies and denotes an indication that these bodies are rebelling against the preconceived and socially constructed notions of femininity. While inked women are stereotypically considered much more sexually appealing and open as compared to their non-tattooed counterparts, these tattoos afford them a sense of empowerment and a declaration of voice.

However, to analyze the differences in tattooing practices between women from lower strata communities and urban middle-class women, a multi-dimensional and intersectional approach is necessary.  This would revolve around the symbolic meanings, rituals, and beliefs associated with tattoos among lower-strata women in juxtaposition with tattoos drawn on urban middle class women as a symbolic enactment of individualism. Additionally, exploring intersecting factors such as socioeconomic status, education, underplay of religion, superstitions and access to resources can provide nuanced insights into how diverse social landscapes influence the perception and function of tattoos among women across different social strata.

Women from lower strata communities are observed in getting inked for reasons such as faith, magic or religious connotations. In that case, they are considered less individualistic and more subversive as compared to women belonging from urban conglomerations. Here, the coercive religious norms, superstitions and community practices become much sturdier whereby they ink themselves under compulsion, rather than individualistic whims and wishes. Therefore, while tattoos themselves can be seen as attractive or unattractive depending on societal norms, it is essential to consider the broader socio-cultural context and how intersecting markers of identity influence perceptions of desirability.

Tattoos as Resistance

In Identifying Marks: The Marked Body in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Jennifer Putzi recounts the saga of Olive Oatman, an American who was abducted and tattooed by Indians in Arizona in 1851 as a form of dominance and resistance. In his memoir, Seven Tattoos, novelist Peter Trachtenberg describes the comical moment of truth when he reveals to his Russian-Jewish mother the tattoos he has concealed from her for years. “You think I’m shocked?” She asks. “I’m not shocked…disgusted maybe, but not shocked.”

Walter (2010) asserts that women have the agency to conform or resist the preconceived stereotypes of womanhood. Likewise, Lawler (2005) says that the dominant discourses of femininity control women regarding how to dress, what to wear, how to act, and how to behave. I argue that women’s tattooed bodies go by the same narrative and resist the preconceived stereotypes of womanhood. But what we fail to realize is that etching tattoos on skin can also be a way of embodying femininity – of its own kind.

The choice of drawing tattoos on skin fluctuates from person to person. While one may go ahead with their choice without any dread or second thoughts, others might feel frightened, embarrassed, or simply too subversive under societal control. McRobbie (2009) argues this ‘choice’ to be regulative. The choices that women make are already restricted and dominated by male-inclined dominant discourses of our society. Hence, the choice behind women’s tattooed bodies are powerful pieces of evidence of how these boundaries can be resisted and conformed at the same time.

Fascinatingly, when we say ‘conforming’ to these boundaries, we might refer to the ‘meaningful’ tattoos – tattoos which are religious emblems, indications of lineage, remembrance of ancestors, or any other that are stereotypically much more ‘acceptable’. As soon as women etch a ‘meaningful’ tattoo on their bodies, they try to present a sense of self in front of their own selves as well as everyone else that they are trying to uphold ‘good’ femininity. These echo an “ethic of care” (Gilligan, 1977), which enables women to position their tattoos as feminine and “appropriate.” This is because, to look after the family, to care, to celebrate ancestors, and to nurture are considered feminine traits (MacRae, 1995). As soon as your tattoo represents the link to your familial relations or someone you love, your tattoo will be considered meaningful, acceptable, and loving in the eyes of others, unlike a woman who has a tattoo of a black metal emblem on her breasts.

Also, the bodily portions where one wants to have tattoos hold pivotal significance. For instance, tattoos on wrists, toes, fingers, and arms are much more accepted and normalized as compared to tattoos on beasts, hips, or any other. This gives rise to gender markings and the narrative of choice being regulated. It is at this juncture, that we achieve stereotypical labeled differences between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tattoos, through and through.

Source: Edgy Minds

“I want a mark on my body that my husband has never seen!”

While there lie diverse research studies on men being tattooed (Cronin, 2001; Goldstein, 2007; Guéguen, 2012), most fail to realize what female body politics has to offer in terms of women being tattooed. Tattooed bodies imply self-worth. However, there lies arguments and counterarguments regarding whether body consciousness is only revealed through body art and not anything else, whether tattoos convert women to de-facto feminists at once, and whether tattoo can be observed as a statement of independence.

Margot Mifflin in her study Bodies of Subversion (2013) cites statements and interviews of a few tattooed women, whereby one of them says, “I want a mark on my body that my husband has never seen.” Needless to say, she wanted to get rid of her wife-like characteristics right after her divorce. This furthers how tattoos provide empowerment and authorization to the inked bodies, which might also be termed as a prowess of power – a kind of power where she has the superlative right to do whatever she wants with her body.

A young lesbian who got her first tattoo after coming out notes, “I did it as a way to express my differences” which attests to nothing but the pride in her sexual orientation and gender identity. Tattoos might also refer to lineages, for instance: “I tattooed a family—grandmother, mother, aunt, and two granddaughters,” says artist Suzanne Fauser (quoted in Mifflin, 2013).

Tattoos as Gendered Markings on Women’s Bodies

“Yeah, I got a tattoo. And no, you can’t see it.”

(Winston’s “No Additives, No Bull” (1997) campaign)

Tattoos with husbands’ names on wife’s bodies – be it on arms or wrists, are more relevant. While sometimes it is done with affection, sometimes it is done under stern control. This designates that the wife is the property of her husband (Thompson, 2015). Irrespective of whatever the name is etched, it proves that the body is owned and not obtainable to others. This is also prevalent among men, whereby we observe tattoos with the names of women with hearts, pigeons, or roses. According to Ellis (2008), tattoos with such names refer to the ‘marking’ of skin for their partners. As Diane Ackerman puts it in A Natural History of the Senses, “tattoos make unique the surface of one’s self, embody one’s secret dreams, adorn with magic emblems the Altamira of the flesh” (1990).

Also, there lies a probability of two-fold attacks. For instance, tattooed women on one hand alter their bodies and participate publicly. On the other hand, it is believed that they reject their natural femininity and womanhood, hence they ink their bodies. In a nutshell, there arises a double-sided agitation against women’s tattooed bodies.

Within the rubric of Indian perspective, Monika Thakur (2016) writes, how Arunachal Pradesh’s Apatani women were protected from being abducted by getting inked on their faces, to make them look ugly and filthy. These eventually ranged to barbaric practices following which they used thorns to cut their skin and left it open for getting it infected even more. This made their tattoos larger in size and much more evident. Similarly, Northeastern tribes chiefly, Singhpo, in Assam and Arunachal incorporate tattooing on women’s skin from ankles to knee as a profound marker of marriage. Nevertheless, unmarried girls abstain from any kind of inking on their bodies.

While South India boasts of the Toda tribe for getting tattooed in embroidery like geometric patterns, Orissa’s Kutia Kondh tribe usually ink themselves to recognize each other after life (Thakur, 2016). Likewise, Western tribes of India particularly the Rabari women of Kutch ink themselves on neck, breasts, and arms for indicating the tribe’s stern belief in magic.

While fundamentalist understandings of feminist bodies and the way women need to defy them have been already documented in studies revolving around body politics (Hekman S. & S. Bordo, 1993; J. Price & M. Shildrick, 1999), these tattoos also act as gender markings and insignias of autonomy. But, in the case of women, a tattooed body is very often misrepresented as a public body, much like the connotation of a prostitute. Hence, women being tattooed fight oppression; however, they also participate in multiple femininities by erasing the boundaries and drawing upon a constant negotiation between conformation and resistance.

Conclusion

The meaning-making of women’s tattooed bodies serves as a negotiation between confirmation and rejection of preconceived femininity and its alternative forms. While tattooing is considered no longer a male exercise solely, gendered discourses and their interplay of women’s bodies are also required to be examined. Whether these tattoos are leading to a narrative of bodily construction, or performing femininity is personal yet public at the same time.

Collectively, these tattoos possess a concealed yet publicized story of every single woman struggling with bodily politics. While tattoos hold erotic power, they also reject sexual availability. Hence, skin – the only organ that separates our personal self from the public world – being tattooed downplays dominance but not always, acts as a memoir, celebrates self-worth, and rejoices resistance, all in unison.

Works Cited

Ackerman, D. (1990). A natural history of the senses. New York, Random House.

Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York, Routledge. Hypatia. 1995;10(4):151-157. doi:10.1017/S0887536700015944

Cronin, T.A. (2001). Tattoos, piercings, and skin adornments. Dermatology Nursing, 13(5), 380–383.

Day, K. (2010). I. Pro-anorexia and ‘Binge-drinking’: Conformity to damaging ideals or ‘new’, resistant femininities? Feminism and Psychology, 20(2), 242–248.

Ellis, Juniper. (2008) Tattooing the World: Pacific Designs in Print and Skin. New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/elli14368

Gilligan, C. (1977). In a different voice: Women’s conceptions of self and of morality. Harvard Educational Review, 47(4), 481–517. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.47.4.g6167429416hg5l0

Goldstein, N. (2007). Tattoos defined. Clinics in Dermatology, 25(4), 417–420.

Guéguen, N. (2012). Tattoos, piercings, and alcohol consumption. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 36(7), 1253–1256.

Hekman, S. Susan Bordo. (1993). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Lawler, S. (2005). Disgusted Subjects: The Making of Middle-Class Identities. The Sociological Review, 53(3), 429-446. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2005.00560.x

Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Milne, A. B. (1995). The dissection of selection in person perception: Inhibitory processes in social stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(3), 397–407. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.3.397

McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. London: Sage.

Mifflin M. (2013). Bodies of subversion : a secret history of women and tattoo (3rd ed.). PowerHouse Books.

Price, Janet & Shildrick, Margrit. (1999). Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. Routledge.

Putzi, Jennifer. (2000). “Identifying marks: The marked body in nineteenth-century American literature”. ETD collection for University of Nebraska – Lincoln. AAI9967403.

Thakur, M. (2016) Taping ink into the skin! Brief history of Indian traditional tattoos, EdgyMinds. Available at: https://www.edgyminds.com/taping-ink-into-the-skin-brief-history-of-indian-traditional-tattoos/ (Accessed: 23 February 2024).

Thompson, R. A. (2015). Relationships, regulation, and early development. In M. E. Lamb & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science: Socioemotional processes (7th ed., pp. 201–246). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118963418.childpsy306

Trachtenberg, P. (1997) Seven tattoos: A memoir in the flesh. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.

Walter, N. (2010). Living dolls: The return of sexism. London: Virago Press.

Bio:
Oishika Ghosh has completed her Postgraduation with a University Gold Medal, from the Dept of Sociology at Jadavpur University, Kolkata achieving First Class First position. Her research interests include Performance studies, Caste, Gender, and Visual Sociology. She is a classical dance practitioner and a Govt. accredited National Scholar in the field of Kathak dance, Govt of India, Ministry of Culture. Oishika has presented her papers at both International and National Conferences, organized by International Sociological Association (ISA), JNU (CSSP), Indian Sociological Society (ISS), University of Melbourne, World Convention of Finland, Portuguese Congress of Sociology, and Jadavpur University, Kolkata, among others. Oishika had also pursued her course on ‘Tagore and nationalism’ under the direct mentorship of Dr. Ashis Nandy, at the University of California, UC Berkeley. Her pieces have been published on a few academic websites and Journal magazines.

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